Ashes of Spirits
by Pashleyy
Summary: It will be worse than any Blight, the Wardens fear. Thedas is fractured, and the Chantry is falling. The peoples' last hope rests upon an urn of ashes, and a corrupt spirit of Justice. There will be loss. There will be suffering. And by Andraste, there will be dragons. Anders/f!Hawke/Fenris


_A/N: You know, I promised I wouldn't do this to myself again. Another fanfiction? After _how_ many years? But alas, you can't keep a good dog down, as they say in Ferelden. I'll go ahead and say that I'm very much into sex (in later chapters). So if you wouldn't entertain the idea of Hawke doing the dirty bareback on a stallion, then you're in the right place. I'd at least put 'em in a haystack. Or a hidden room in the Chantry, Andraste smite them where they, erm, lay._

_Anyway, thank you for reading!_

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**ONE**

_"And then Andraste  
no more willing a slave  
prayed to the  
Spirit of Justice  
and he came."  
_- Andraste 3:12

There was... darkness.

_Oh, wonderful_, Anders thought, _what could be more foreboding than that?_ Nothing that he could think of-except for the depths of Hawke's eyes as she made her decision. _Hawke._ The name jolted through him terribly, like an electric shock from a doorknob. She had killed him, hadn't she? She'd looked into his eyes as he did, but she hadn't been the Hawke he knew. Her eyes had been as black as pitch, her brow a straight ridge of indifference.

Was that all it was? Indifference? He knew not to expect more... but somewhere along the way he had. Not even a moment of pity? A mote? A drabble?

He didn't remember the pain of the knife itself, straight to the heart. How long had they let him bleed out before they dragged his body away? Did they give him a proper burial? Or did they leave his body in the streets for the crows to feast? The latter, he assumed. Even that pesky, nosy dwarf would've left his bones to sink into the ground where he fell for destroying the Chantry.

That was another jolt-_What have I done?_

**What was needed. What was sanctioned, **came the deep, commandeering rumble of Justice's reply.

His breath caught in his throat. _No_. He was dead! He was supposed to have separated from the Spirit. He was supposed to be free, finally, of that wretched, horrible... _friend_. He was a friend no matter what the Spirit accomplished, no matter what darkness he opened into the world. Wasn't it funny, how friends were always his downfall.

"Anders."

That was his name. Or was it Justice? Vengeance? Did human souls have names in the afterlife? Or were they just-what, exactly? What were human souls in the grand scheme of the Void? Whatever this was, it was dark, but at least it was warm.

"Come on, Blondie. Wake your sodding ass up!"

"Varric, you're not helping," scolded another, cooler voice. It sounded vaguely like...

**We shall try again**, Vengeance promised. **We shall not rest until every Templar has met Andraste herself**.

Funny how the spirit said _we_, a group effort. Hadn't it been the spirit itself who set the Chantry aflame? But then, hadn't it been he, himself, who lit the fuse? One and then the other, one step forward and two back, it was always a dance, an intricate waltz with this overzealous friend inside of him. Always together, never separated and yet... and yet the spirit said _we_. _We_ had to teach the Circle a lesson. _We_ had to set the Chantry on the right path.

There was never an I, and there was never a choice... but Anders began to suspect that the we he always referred wasn't the company he kept, but something much, much deeper.

He felt a hand press against his cheek, cool and gentle. It turned his head, and ran delicate fingers down his jawline. He thought that if he could just open his eyes, he'd see her, and he was afraid. There was a frigid cold against the left side of his ribs, a twisting, gut-wrenching pull. _Magic_, he could sense. It jerked into his bones, crawled against his blood, and pulled every atom of his body upward, inward, until he gasped and flew open his eyes. The Spirit screamed, flashing blue across his vision, before dulling again to that mild, nagging ache in the back of his head, an injury he could never part from.

"Anders!"

His eyes focused. A damp, wooden ceiling, familiar dark pillars between castes of wine and old armor. Bits of mementos from adventures and places. Orlais, the Thaig, Sundermount, and memories of Ferelden. A blurry shape above him slowly came into focus, hair as dark as pitch, eyes as blue as a cloudless, gentle sky, sharp as diamonds. "...Hawke?" he croaked, his throat dusty dry.

"Oh praise the Maker," she muttered-was that relief in her voice?-and turned to the dwarf at her side. "Could you get a glass of water? Bodahn should be upstairs."

"You sure he doesn't need a pint of ale instead?"

"Varric."

"Right, right." He turned around and hurried back up the cellar stairs to the kitchen.

Disoriented, Anders tried to sit up, but Hawke pushed him back down. The entire room spun. He couldn't walk anywhere if he tried. He closed his eyes tightly, Justice whispering again in the back of his mind, before she called his name again. He turned his head to her voice and slowly opened his eyes again, lost in the worried, wet pool of crystalline that were so heartbreakingly familiar. He watched her for a long, decisive moment before stating, "You didn't kill me."

She didn't look away. "No, but I was tempted."

"You should have."

"Maybe so, but I'm not a hero."

"You're a Champion of Kirkwall, that's worse," he joked, or at least he tried to. He could barely speak, his mind buzzing, his chest aching. His entire body felt sore, and stiff, as if he had been dead and rose again. But that was impossible. _I only wish that I was._ He swallowed, and his throat scratched all the way down. Turning his gaze to the ceiling again, he closed his eyes. He didn't understand, couldn't understand. He could feel the accusations burning in the air around them, and thought that this might just be worse than death.

She took a deep breath, "You killed a lot of innocent people."

"I did." He didn't want to deny it any longer. He'd denied it every step up to the Chantry, and it had exhausted him by the time he made it back down to the crate. _But we had a reason. _

**We had to cease the lies―**

He bit the inside of his cheek, pain shocking his mind into silence.

"You have begun a war," she continued. "Not against Kirkwall... but against Thedas. Against Orlais, Tevinter, Antiva..." her voice broke. He'd been with her when Carver was taken by the Grey Wardens. He'd stood at her side as she rocked her dead mother's desecrated corpse. He knew how she sounded when she couldn't take anymore, when she was broken, in disrepair. _And now I'm another cause._ "Anders... this is much more serious than any Blight. Please tell me that it wasn't you. Please tell me that it was... that other thing inside of you. Please say that you didn't want it, that you didn't... didn't..."

He turned his face away. A line of shields hung against the wall, they were all ones that Aveline had used throughout the years. She never had the room in the Barracks, and Hawke was kind enough to take them, and display them on a wall. Even if it was in the cellar. It killed him to know that she was that kind. "I told you when we met, Justice and I are-"

"No, you aren't."

"Hawke..."

"You aren't, Anders. You may think you are, but look at this," she pulled a scrap of paper out of her robes and un-crumpled it to show him. It was a letter with a Tevinter Imperium seal at the bottom. "His name is Erius Talian, and he's a scholar on Spirits of the Void, like your Justice."

"_My_ Justice," he scoffed, the sour in his voice tasting like decay. A sharp pain shot through his rib, and he groaned, bringing his hand up to his wound.

She intercepted it and squeezed tightly. "You owe me this, Anders. I saved your life."

"You almost killed me with a dagger!" he shot back incredulously, and the sighed. "I don't deserve-"

Varric's footsteps echoed down the stairs again. Quickly, she turned his face to hers, so close they could've kissed, and at one point they would've. But those days are long gone. She pressed her forehead against his, her cool skin against his, their eyes locked. She smelled just as he remembered, of lilacs and the sweet smell of untainted blood. It was the only perk he enjoyed from the Spirit, enhanced senses, and he enjoyed it all the more when she was so close.

She whispered, her voice coated thick against her tongue, "You deserve to be a free man, Anders, and it's about time you realize that freedom comes from here." She pressed her hand against his heart, tucking the letter into the folds of his robe, as Varric stepped off at the bottom of the stairs. "And this is for using me," she added, and electricity crackled across Ander's chest, as sharp as a blade, and shocked him into unconsciousness.

Hawke bit her bottom lip and steeled herself. She was doing the right thing. She had done the right thing. A life for a life is not vengeance, and neither is a life for a hundred innocents, however else Kirkwall, and especially her friends, felt differently.

Varric's voice interrupted her thoughts. "Well Blondie, here's your... Oh, he's asleep _again_?"

"Don't sound so disappointed," Hawke replied, rising to her feet. She took the glass from his hand and downed it in one gulp. "It should've been ale," she agreed, wiping her mouth, and departed for the stairs again.

Varric quirked an eyebrow suspiciously. "Hawke, I've been a very good dwarf these past few days. I haven't said a word while you've kept him… here. But I think I deserve a reward for my loyalty?"

"You'll get a story when this is over with," she replied, closing the cellar door behind him, but he was a stickler for facts, however much his stories proved otherwise. "Why did you spare him?"

She shrugged. Tried not to think about it. "Because I needed a new manservant. I can't keep going to the Blooming Rose. What will the neighbors think?"

"Wait, do you smell that? I do, and it smells like nugshit." He stopped her halfway into the living room.

The firelight crackled across the crimson carpet that her mother had so painstakingly picked out and had shipped from Orlais. The medal presented to her from the late Night-Commander for saving Kirkwall hung above the mantle with the Amell crest. She stared at it for a long moment, her arms crossed over her chest, before turning to face him again. Even as the Champion, she never looked as unbreakable as his stories claimed her to be, and he was always sorry to realize it.

"So, what is the real reason?" he pressed. "Does it have to do with the letter the Wardens sent you a few days ago?"

Her eyebrows shot up. "How do you know about that?" Then, "_Isabella_…"

"Don't blame Rivaini. She needed a challenge. But is it? That letter?"

"Yes." Her answer was curt. It was something she didn't want to divulge, but knew she would have to eventually. "Yes, it is."

He looked up to the ceiling and muttered, "Andraste help us all."

Hawke nodded, and set her destination for her bedroom. "That's the plan," she replied. "Tell everyone to meet here at dawn." She needed to pack, she needed to get her deeds in order, disperse her money, find a good home for Bodahn, Sandal, and the elf servant. She needed to buy a ship, find her maps, send a reply to her brother in the Wardens. There was so much to do, and so little time.

So, so little time.

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_A/N: Thanks for reading! So, I'm torn. Should I call Hawke "Hawke" or give her an *actual* name? Anders doesn't have one (at least not one that we know of), so I'm torn..._


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